Why Do People Do Stupid Things?

A man jumps 180 feet from a crane into an air bag. A woman dons a fire suit, climbs into a car and blows it up. Another man splits 45 watermelons open in less than 60 seconds, with his head. Watching this on television two questions repeated in my mind. Why would anyone do this? And, why am I watching this?

The first question is something I have considered for years. Several possible answers have come to mind from boredom to adrenaline addiction, but I think the true answer is more basic. People have a desire to be recognized, to receive attention, to be special. They want to be somebody. It is as if their greatest fear is insignificance. The desire for adulation and recognition is so overpowering that people will risk life and limb for a moment of praise.

It is easy to look at these seemingly insane daredevils and say, "I would never do That!"  But is not totally true. We all do things to get recognized, many of which are silly and some of which are downright foolish. Simple expressions of this desire include those who have too many clothes or too much makeup and those non-stop talkers who always need to be the center of attention. The desire to be recognized, when not appropriately checked, can lead to harmful behaviors such as sexual indiscretions, risky investments, or the dangerous behaviors we see on reality TV. Being ordinary, just one of the crowd, doesn’t satisfy.

The root of all this dates back to the nature of all mankind. The Genesis account describes the initial sin of Adam and Eve and the deception that led to it. They were created to live lives in submission to God, but that was not enough. They were tempted by the thought that they could be more, that they could be like God. The desire to be Godlike, to be above others, has plagued us ever since. We want to be recognized as greater and more special than we are. Contentment is an elusive virtue.

The solution to this problem is not to do more and achieve more, as this is a desire that can never be satisfied. The solution is to see ourselves as God sees us, to remind ourselves that our value comes from Him and what He sees in us and not in the praise of others. This is a simple statement but it is amazingly difficult to realize! It is nevertheless worth the effort for it is the secret to a life of contentment and peace.

-              Bart

As for the second question, I watch this on TV for the same reason I watch most programs. It was what was on at the time!

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Bill Cosby, Ben Affleck and Others Who Were Not What They Seemed to Be

People we considered our heroes are turning out to be anything but. How could we be fooled so badly?

Bill Cosby was America’s Dad. Not only did he play a loving, intelligent and supportive father on his television sitcom, he was a tireless advocate for education and personal responsibility. I was one of the millions who looked up to him and considered him a role model. Little did I know that he was a sexual deviant who preyed on women. Any claim he may have had to innocence evaporated these last few weeks when the transcript of a 2005 deposition was released in which he admitted under oath giving a woman a powerful sleeping pill in order to have sex with her. America’s Dad was in reality America’s Pervert.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were America’s Couple. Talented, beautiful and seemingly in love, they built a family together in the public eye. In the midst of the dysfunction of Hollywood they put on a façade of normalcy. There recent divorce announcement revealed the truth about their marriage. It was in reality dysfunctional and unhealthy. Careers came before kids, and the extended absences common with the acting profession contributed to the end of their marriage.

Leland Yee was an American success story. Born in China, he came to America at the age of 3. He graduated from UC Berkeley, one of the top schools in the nation, then went on to obtain a doctorate in Child Psychology. He worked as a child therapist for years before entering politics in 1988. He was a member of the school board in San Francisco, a county supervisor, and a member of the State Assembly in California before winning a seat in the California State Senate in 2006. He gained a reputation as a staunch advocate for gun safety and sponsored numerous bills restricting access to guns in California. In 2012 he announced his candidacy for the office of California Secretary of State. Mr. Lee was respected member of the Asian community and honored by gun control groups. He was also a crook and a gun runner. He pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges July 1, 2015.

The list of similarly admired people who are not at all admirable is seemingly endless. Sports heroes, celebrities and even pastors are placed on pedestals for public adoration only to later be found completely unworthy of respect. I am left wondering how it is that we idolize losers with such regularity.

I have come to the conclusion that it is human nature to want heroes. We want to have someone to look up to, someone who can help us believe that amazing things are possible. What we do not want to recognize is the truth that all people are all messed up, that no person is perfect, near perfect or even good at heart.

We choose distant people as heroes, people we do not know well, because we can overlook or deny their imperfections. When we know someone well we tend to know their faults and failures and all of the ways in which they are not heroic at all. We tend to focus on their imperfections and cast them aside as potential role models.

In my life I am learning to look up to a different kind of person. I am learning to admire those who work hard at being the best they can be outside of the public eye, people who are far from perfect, who know their flaws and do not hide them but instead work to overcome them every day. I believe it is these people, who labor in the shadows and whose accomplishments are overlooked by others, who are the greatest role models in our world.

When the day comes that we all stand before God and give account for our actions it will not be the Afflecks, Garners, Cosby’s and Lee’s who are recognized. The greatest honor will not be reserved for the Obamas, Bushes, Clintons or Romneys of the world, the movers and shakers and the most powerful. It will be for those individuals who honored God in their daily lives, who faithfully loved and served God outside of the eyes of the world.

May we all seek to be and to honor these kind of heroes.

Bart

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A Parent's Heart Hardened, A Child's Heart Broken

When life gets busy little things, and little children, can be overlooked. When parent's don't care as they should the pain can last a lifetime. As a child who was abused and neglected I have experienced this firsthand.

As a child my greatest love was baseball. It consumed my passion and my attention. I practiced with my brother for hours and played with neighborhood kids whenever I could. I read baseball books, collected baseball cards and watched the game of the week on TV every Saturday. In spite of my passion and interest I was only allowed to play one season of Little League baseball. Although my mother was a stay-at-home mom she considered taking us to practice too much of a chore. What was important to me did not matter at all to my parents.

While my childhood was characterized by significant verbal and physical abuse the pain of not playing baseball hurt the most and the longest. Beatings hurt for a short while and bruises faded but knowing my parents didn’t care about my heart brought a pain that endured for years.

While the feelings of a child were irrelevant in my family they were treasured in my wife’s. Through her I learned how important little things can be to a child. She taught me the value of listening to their music, watching their TV shows and playing their games, that when I valued their interests I valued them.

Over the years I have learned that caring about feelings and paying attention to the hearts of others is a Biblical value, one that was modeled by Jesus. He showed His love in the way He dealt with the silly fears and foolish failures of His followers and in the tender way He welcomed children and reached out to those in need.

Learning to love in this way has been a challenge for me. Overcoming the callousness and selfishness that I learned at home has required conscious effort. The brokenness of my parents was passed on to me and I am not naturally compassionate and caring. I am eternally grateful to God for loving me enough to help me change.

-          Bart

I share in detail about my childhood story and my life-long struggle to overcome in the third part of the series on Broken Thinking that is available on my vimeo page. Go to www.vimeo.com/bartbarrett and you can view it, and the other messages in the series online. You can go directly to the message on the importance of caring by clicking here.

Thanks to all who read and listen, and especially to those who share posts with others. Comments and questions are always welcome.

How I Define Marriage

Marriage is important to me. It is now and it was 33 years ago when Lisa and I stood before our friends, our family and our God and promised to be faithful for the rest of our lives. 

I was only 20 when we took our vows yet I understood the significance of the moment. That ceremony did not merely mark the beginning of a legal arrangement or the change of Lisa’s name, it was the declaration that we were entering a relationship ordained by God from the beginning of time. From that moment on we would be one. Personal agendas and individual goals were cast aside. Everything we did for the rest of our lives would be done not as a man and as a woman but as a husband and a wife. Every deed and every word would be a reflection of who we were as a couple and a family and not just as individuals.

As we planned the wedding I considered how we could communicate to those in attendance the significance and meaning of the ceremony. I desperately wanted to tell the world that our union was spiritual and holy in the eyes of God and that we were promising to serve Him together. We decided that the best way to accomplish this would be to take communion together as our very first act as man and wife.

At the completion of our vows, we knelt and took the bread and the wine together. Communion is a sacrament established by Jesus Himself, intended to represent the sacrifice He had made for His people. His body was broken and His blood was shed when He was crucified, nailed to a cross. He did so as payment for the sins of His people. By taking communion we were telling all in attendance that we recognized the sacrifice Jesus had made and that the primary purpose of our marriage was to reflect the perfect sacrificial love that Jesus had for us.

The Bible teaches that this is the purpose of marriage. The husband is to love his wife with the same sacrificial love that Jesus displayed for His bride (the church) and that the wife is to love and honor her husband as the church is to love and honor Christ. We wanted our marriage to reflect that level of love and sacrifice.

While we taking communion my friend sang a song, the words of which perfectly expressed our desire for our future-

“As for me and my house we will serve the Lord, now and forever more. He’ll be our God, we’ll be His people. And in the bond of His covenant, we share the bread that is heaven sent, ever mindful to be thankful of the One who sent His Son.”

This promise has sustained us for 33 years. When the tough times came, we reminded ourselves of our commitment. Just as Jesus would never leave us or forsake us, so we would never we leave or forsake one another. Just as Jesus saw our rebellion and sin and chose to die for us, so we also have worked to love and sacrifice for one another even when we did not deserve it.

The oneness that we declared on the sixteenth of July 33 years ago has become a greater reality with each passing year. We are who we are as individuals because of who we are together and I could not be more grateful. While Lisa is not perfect, she is the perfect wife for me. 

Bart

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She Lost a Lover and was Happy

I was shocked to learn that they had called off the relationship. They had been together for 12 years and there had been no sign that there was any trouble between them. What happened? The answer was even more surprising then the news of the change in relationship status. She blamed Jesus.

The relationship had gotten serious shortly after Sally’s divorce from her abusive husband. She and Adaline started as roommates but soon became lovers. They did not hide their love for one another and the relationship endured many challenges. Sally was nearly disowned by her children. She was not invited to their weddings and excluded from the lives of her grandchildren. She talked many times over the years of the pain she felt at the loss of relationship. She desperately wanted to be involved in their lives but did not think it right that relationship with her children would require the loss of relationship with Adaline. Sally and Adaline seemed to be deeply committed to one another.

At a recent visit the topic of marriage came up in conversation. Given that same sex marriage is now legal, I asked what her feelings were on the subject. Her answer caught me off guard, “Adaline and I are not together anymore in that way.”

I was stunned. “What happened?” I asked. Her answer stunned me more.

She told me they had been going to Bible study together for a while, and one day they realized that they couldn’t be together as lovers and be followers of Christ. “We want to go to heaven, so we decided we wouldn’t be involved like that anymore.” They continued to live as roommates but had ended all romantic involvement.

It was a remarkable conversation and it revealed much about her new faith. The conclusion she had reached about abstinence seemed to be a personal one based on a realization that she had reached on her own.  No one had forced it on her, no one had told her that she had to do it. She had not been bullied or badgered into the decision. What was even more remarkable was how she and her partner had reached this conclusion together. They simply decided that eternal happiness was more important than earthly intimacy, and that heaven was worth the sacrifice. 

Their reasoning was simple. They believed in Jesus and the Bible. They believed that following Jesus meant that they would need to set aside their ideas of right and wrong and follow the teachings of Scripture. The Bible's teaching on sexual morality was clear- sexual intimacy outside of traditional marriage was sin. They knew that they could not continue living in sin and follow Jesus. Following Jesus came with the promise of eternal life in heaven. They did the math and made a decision.

Being new to the faith she was unaware of the power in her testimony. She was not preachy or arrogant, she did not condemn others with her words. They had simply decided that Jesus was worth it.

She did not know it but she is a living illustration of the truth found in many of the parables of Jesus. Two of them are found close together in Matthew 13.

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

Jesus’ point was that eternal relationship with Him is so valuable that we should be willing to sacrifice everything for it. In other teachings He makes it clear that all who follow Him will need to make sacrifices and that self-denial is one of the hallmarks of true faith.

Sally has true faith. As with the man who found the treasure in the field, her sacrificial decision was made with joy, not sorrow. She embodies the truth that when we focus on the promises of Christ, of the joy that awaits, we will find ourselves wanting to let go of anything that could get in the way.

-          Bart

Note- There may be some who will read this post as anti-gay. Such a reading misses the point entirely. The post is not about the specific actions laid aside, it is about the fact that faith requires us all to lay aside things of value to us. The Christian faith does not require that we give up something to follow Jesus. It requires that we give up everything, and she models this.  A previous post addressed a similar issue in a heterosexual couple. In each case, I simply related the truth of the story as it occurred.